


when it's all over

by taiyakeo



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, also ukai and takeda are old, big warning, cause he's dead..., cried editing it, cried writing it, i mean not takeda anymore..., i'm trying to say they're adults, not fun story, so the karasuno kids would be .. not kids anymore, sorry.. i slipped, takeda had cancer, this whole thing is just takeda's funeral, tw: Funeral, tw: dead loved one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23592268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taiyakeo/pseuds/taiyakeo
Summary: Takeda's gone, and Ukai can't handle it.
Relationships: Takeda Ittetsu/Ukai Keishin
Comments: 5
Kudos: 36





	when it's all over

Ukai hasn't been out of the house in years. At least that's what it feels like, anyway. It’s chilly, even inside the building, so he wraps his coat around himself. He can barely feel himself walking. He sees Daichi walking up the steps to stand behind him out of the corner of his eye and shifts a step away, hunching his shoulders inwards. 

"You okay?" Daichi murmurs, retracting his hand so quickly Ukai barely sees it. 

"Yes," he says from between his teeth. 

The escalator is janky, stuttering beneath their feet. He looks upwards into the sky, hands in his pockets, through the skylight. 

Beautiful, Takeda would say if he was here. 

He looks at the dragonfly's corpse caught in a spider web in the corner of the ceiling instead, letting his mind go blank. Daichi sniffs, and when they reach the top he thinks that everything is almost eerily silent. 

"Hey." He nods (he can't manage a bow anymore) at the small cluster of the students he used to coach. "Thanks for coming." 

They look hesitant, and he resents it, only just stopping himself from clenching his jaw because Takeda doesn't-- wouldn't want him to. There’s a moment of stillness in which everybody is looking at him, but he pretends he doesn't notice. A man in a suit emerges from behind a door and leads them through a few corridors. This time, Ukai is flanked by Hinata and, lagging a little farther behind, Kageyama. 

He's not going to cry. He's not going to cry. They shuffle into a room, shoulder-to-shoulder. There's a structure like train tracks somewhere below them, visible through a window. 

He remembers, stupidly, the time from years ago--When they'd gotten on a train together after school. He'd lied that he had nothing to do after club ended, and told Takeda that he wanted to take a detour to buy something, conveniently along Takeda's route home. 

"It's so far," Takeda had said. "Why don't I take it for you?" 

"I--have to go personally. Annoying, right?" 

Takeda must have understood, because he'd smiled and said nothing more. 

He remembers how crowded it was that day, how he'd tried not to smile when they'd knocked shoulders. He doesn't remember the conversation they carried (softly, because it was rude to speak above a whisper) but he does remember the scenery. He remembers how the train brushed past trees and branches. He remembers when they'd passed a body of water, how it'd been dyed such a beautiful orangey colour by the sun submerging itself into its depths like at an onsen. He remembers the look of wonder in Takeda's eyes, and how when they'd reached his stop Takeda had bowed somewhat shyly, and Ukai had gotten off and on the train to go home at the next stop, clutching the precious feeling in his chest, and then he's angry--because he wants to know more about that day, and he wants to know nothing. 

So he stops, shaking himself a little to push the thoughts from his mind, focusing again on the tracks. There's a door at the back, probably, because he hears one open.

He's confused for a few seconds until he sees it. 

It moves slowly along the tracks, and he sucks air in through his teeth. The room is warm. Too warm. It's suffocating. he doesn't want to watch. It's going too slow. He stares at the contraption at the back. It looks like a claw machine, strangely. 

"He's gonna blast off like a rocket," Hinata murmurs under his breath, and Kageyama smacks him so hard that he can see a red handprint on the skin. Hinata makes no protest.

Ukai wants to laugh but knows he can't. 

When it's gone, he finally realises. Cliche perhaps it is, but--

This is the last time he's ever going to see Takeda again. Not even--He's not even going to be able to look him in the face. He'll never feel his hands against his face again. He'll never see takeda's smile--Crooked though it'd become over the years. He'll never--

He tells himself to shut up and suck it up. 

The room is quiet, and he hears someone open the door to their right. Then Daichi's nudging him gently out, and he catches a glimpse of Yachi with her fist almost entirely in her mouth. 

"Don't. You'll choke," he says, gruffly, slapping her on the back as gently as he can manage, which still makes her stumble. 

There's an area with benches right after that, and a door leading out to a driveway, and a lift going to the carparks. 

"Thanks again," he says, loud enough for everyone to hear, and everyone knows it's their cue to go. Yamaguchi lingers a beat, red-rimmed eyes glancing hesitantly at him, before he shakes his head and runs to meet the rest. 

He's alone. 

He steps out into the driveway, as though the fresh air will do anything. There's a small koi pond. 

A big one swims out from the side, and he thinks (for some reason) about sushi. Takeda made him sushi one time. They'd been to standing sushi joints too, until their joints couldn't handle it, and then they'd just had takeaway. 

It's okay, right? He tells himself everything will be fine. They're old--They're? He was old. But Ukai's old, too. He thanks his lucky stars that he, unlike Takeda, hadn't needed morphine just to stay afloat--Not as though he was an addict. It wasn't like Ukai didn't need it too in some way, though, if he's really thinking about it, because Takeda's face had been so filled with pain sometimes he'd begged him to take it. Being alive, in pain—it’s worse than being dead, right?

He doesn't want to remember. It happens, anyway--because there's nothing that he's been living for other than Takeda, really. He's tied to everything that makes him happy. Now there's nothing left for him.

Seeing their old students makes him think if Takeda would have been sad about not being able to properly say goodbye. He hadn't wanted any of them to see him so weak. 

"I beat it one time," he'd said, cheerfully, once. "Not like I can't beat cancer again, right? Let them come when it's over." 

Well, it's over, he guesses.

**Author's Note:**

> i hear you. you're confused about the train tracks. well so am i ... it's just a thing i saw when my grandpa was getting sent off. i dont know why i saw it, i don't know why it's a thing, but it happened, so i wrote it


End file.
